Ask Ars: Finally upgrading to Windows 7—should I go 32- or 64-bit?

Finally getting around to upgrading to Windows 7 from XP or Vista and …

Ask Ars was one of the first features of the newly born Ars Technica back in 1998. And now, as then, it's all about your questions and our community's answers. Each week, we'll dig into our bag of questions, answer a few based on our own know-how, and then we'll turn to the community for your take. To submit your own question, see our helpful tips page.

Question: I'm finally ready to drop Windows XP and move to Windows 7. Should I go with the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the operating system?

Short answer: 64-bit.

Long answer: 64-bit, but you may not see much real difference. Before explaining why, there is an important contraindication to be aware of: if you use any 16-bit Windows applications or DOS applications, you'll have to either stick with 32-bit Windows, or run those applications in a virtual machine (or, for DOS programs, an environment such as DOSBox). 64-bit Windows supports 64-bit and 32-bit applications, but 16-bit ones are consigned to the trash can of history.

In practice, the only advantage of using 64-bit Windows is that you can install more physical memory. 32-bit versions of desktop Windows are limited to 4GiB of physical memory, and thanks to dubious compatibility restrictions, they can't even offer that much. Every byte of memory in a system has a physical address, a number representing that byte of memory, and on 32-bit desktop Windows, those addresses are only 32 bits long (or rather, the addresses are between 36 and 64 bits long depending on which bit of software is manipulating them, but only 32 bits are actually used by Windows). This should allow 232 addresses, and hence 232 bytes—4GiB—of memory.

But unfortunately, physical memory isn't the only thing using that address range. Peripherals such as video cards also carve out chunks of the address range, so that the CPU can communicate directly with them. Video cards in particular will often attempt to place all of their video memory—hundreds of megabytes, sometimes even gigabytes—within this range. When this happens, the physical memory loses out, and has to be relocated; it is given addresses that require the use of the full 64 bits. Since Windows only uses 32-bit physical addresses, that means that you lose access to some of your RAM.

It wasn't always this way; Windows 2000 and the Windows XP with no service packs installed both set the limit simply to 4GiB total memory, and will use full 64-bit addresses if necessary. Unfortunately, some hardware vendors (notably NVIDIA, though others are also claimed to be responsible) had bugs in their drivers, such that they assumed physical addresses would never use more than 32 bits. When used in a system that required full 64-bit addressing, the drivers would end up corrupting memory and crashing. Rather than forcing hardware vendors to fix their broken software, Microsoft restricted 32-bit desktop Windows to 32-bit addressing (though server versions, with drivers that were in theory server-grade, were never subject to this restriction).

The result is, if you take a look at the memory graph in Windows 7's Resource Monitor on a 32-bit machine, you'll see a big old chunk of grey, denoting "hardware reserved" memory. That represents physical addresses that have been given up to add-in cards, and hence "lost" physical memory.

The 64-bit version has no such restriction. The ability to use memory up to 4GiB—and beyond—remains 64 bit Windows' most compelling feature; it's the one you're most likely to notice day-to-day. It's perhaps a little ironic that this advantage has nothing to do with being 64-bit as such—the 32-bit server versions of Windows can already access all this memory—it's just that 64-bit Windows forces developers to fix the bugs that plagued 32-bit Windows. 64-bit Home Basic raises the limit to 8GiB, Home Premium to 16GiB, and Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate all take it up to 192GiB. Your motherboard and wallet alike are unlikely to support so much memory.

There are a few other benefits, however, that are genuinely a result of using 64-bit software. Unfortunately, they tend to be less noticeable. Because of architectural improvements made when x86 grew 32 to 64 bits, 64-bit software will typically run faster than 32-bit programs. This will make little difference to typical desktop applications, but for certain kinds of software, particularly number-crunching applications, the speed improvement can be valuable.

Another potential benefit—critically important to few, but essentially irrelevant to most—is that each program gets a much larger address space. On 32-bit Windows, in normal configurations, each program only has a usable address space of about 2GiB, half of the total memory that can be addressed with 32-bit addresses. This means that the amount of RAM that the program can manipulate directly is limited to 2GiB. If the program needs to work on a larger chunk of data, it has to move that data in and out of RAM a piece at a time, usually storing it on disk when it's not in RAM. This 2GiB limit is regardless of the amount of physical memory installed; if you run multiple programs, they each get a 2GiB block of their own, so they can use many gigabytes in total, but any individual program can't readily break through this limit.

Not so with 64-bit programs; 64-bit programs get 64-bit addresses, giving an address space of more than 18 billion gigabytes, of which they can theoretically use half. This limit is "theoretical" because neither current 64-bit x86 processors nor Windows support quite that much. The actual limit in theory is a mere 8TiB, but this is still 4096 times more than 32-bit programs can use.

As with the performance issue, this is of limited importance. Some applications—image editing, databases, and even large spreadsheets—can yield considerable benefits from a 64-bit address space. Many others—e-mail, Web browsers, media players—gain little or nothing from the increase. In truth, if you're running the kind of program that benefits from 64-bit address spaces, you've probably already made the switch.

The other benefit—and again, it's slim—is that 64-bit programs should be a little more secure. One of the security measures included in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is Address Space Layout Randomization, ASLR. ASLR puts system libraries and certain other information at random memory locations, which makes it harder to exploit certain kinds of security flaws. Malicious code can, however, use various techniques to try to work around ASLR. One of these involves filling up a process's address space with specially crafted data, such that if a memory address is chosen at random, it will most likely refer to the specially crafted data. This kind of attack relies, in part, on the fact that a 32-bit process has only a relatively small address space: filling almost all of it is feasible. No such luck in a 64-bit process—it's simply far too big to fill in this way.

This advantage will be most significant on software that is subject to substantial attacks—Web browsers, e-mail clients, Office, Adobe Reader, and Flash being the obvious targets. Unfortunately, not all of these are available in 64-bit versions, limiting the efficacy of this protection. Office 2010 includes full 64-bit support, though using the 64-bit version means forfeiting compatibility with most add-ons and extensions. Internet Explorer has a 64-bit version available, but it's hobbled relative to its 32-bit counterpart; the high-performance JavaScript engine found in Internet Explorer 9 is only available for the 32-bit version. 64-bit versions of Chrome and Firefox are experimental and non-standard. Adobe currently has a beta version of 64-bit Flash, but is unlikely to have a stable version until Flash 11 ships. Adobe Reader is 32-bit. All in all, it's rather disappointing; although in the long run the situation is sure to improve, this (slight) security advantage is at the moment of limited utility.

So all in all, the advantages of going for 64-bit aren't big, in general, but they're there. Most new systems will run up against the physical memory limits of 32-bit Windows, making the 64-bit version the natural choice. 32-bit software had a long reign at the top, but its time is past. Windows Server 2008 R2 is already 64-bit-only, and while Windows 8 will almost certainly be available in a 32-bit version, Windows 9 probably won't be. Might as well make the jump now.

231 Reader Comments

Personally, I think it's a travesty that Microsoft even released a 32-bit version of Win7. There's not even that many systems out there capable of running Win7 properly that aren't 64-bit capable, and the tiny handful of apps/drivers that don't work on Win7 x64 can go screw themselves and the users of those can just keep their ancient but working software on their ancient but working hardware.

When windows 7 came out there were 0 atom cpus for netbooks that could run a 64 bit OS. There were also lots of people with vista systems that wouldn't benefit from x64 they were hoping to sell upgrade copies to. The only travesty would have been the revenue losses if they didn't issue a 32 bit version.

"while Windows 8 will almost certainly be available in a 32-bit version, Windows 9 probably won't be"

back when Win7 was still in beta, MS said Win7 will offer 32bit, but Win8 won't. Now that Win8 is getting closer to beta, MS again said Win8 will not support 32bit.

Unless MS recently changed their minds, Win8 will not have a 32bit version, at least for x86.

I've seen this asserted repeatedly, but have never seen an actual MS blog/press release/etc make the statement. Do you have any such citations, or are you just echoing the various rumor blogs (they don't count).

I think I saw a 32-bit development build Win8 that leaked a couple of weeks ago. I've no idea whether it will be released but it would suggest its being in development.

The fun part is having legacy hardware that works fine in Windows 7 32-bit but doesn't work in Windows 7 64-bit. Then there's that copy-protected game software that just doesn't work at all in Windows 7, or worse crashes it and bluescreens.

Like what? I've seen two bluescreens in Windows 7 (and they were my fault) since I installed it (I have it installed on 5 machines... all since Win7 was released).

Who, besides corporate customers, is adopting Windows 7 now when Windows 8 is on the horizon? If you waited a year and a half surely you have patience for another 8 months to get windows 8 and not have a $300 hole in your pocket.

People without blazingly fast computers might opt for Windows 7 if Microsoft's history of new OS's requiring substantially more resources holds true.

If Windows 8 ships on time, it still might be prudent to wait six months before installing it, if stability is a large consideration.

So I can buy into that argument then. I suppose not everyone is running a quad core desktop machine or even dual core necessarily. I would also go out on a limb and say that any system capable of running Windows 7 will be able to run Windows 8 because it's unlikely the OS will change so fundamentally.

I disagree with some of the other commenters claiming Windows 8 will not be out for potentially 18 months or late 2012. Paul Thurrott has stated on his Windows Weekly podcast that a beta of Windows 8 will likely be available in October of this year. Mary Jo Foley (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/win ... mbers/8747) herself states that Windows 8 beta will be available around September 2011 and final version should be available by mid 2012.

However, if stability of 8 is anything like 7 was in it's beta stage then I'll just upgrade in September rather than wait a year for gold master. Betas are free to run so I'll get a good free year out of it before I need to buy it.

I tried both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista (recent service pack) and I went back to 32 until I have a need for large amounts of RAM per application.

I run Office and development tools, plus photo apps with moderate RAM usage. I had 8 GB of physical RAM, and of course the 32-bit OS only used half of that.

* The 64-bit system had twice the useable RAM but also almost twice the usage. Roughly break-even.* The dual system folder layout for 64-bit is annoying.* Dealing with software versions was a pain, i.e. getting some things to run, finding 64-bit versions, etc.

I tried both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista (recent service pack) and I went back to 32 until I have a need for large amounts of RAM per application.

That's not the only reason to use 64b OSs (of any flavor) but it's the most simple one to observe and understand. The whole point of this article is why people should upgrade anyway.

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I run Office and development tools, plus photo apps with moderate RAM usage. I had 8 GB of physical RAM, and of course the 32-bit OS only used half of that.

* The 64-bit system had twice the useable RAM but also almost twice the usage. Roughly break-even.* The dual system folder layout for 64-bit is annoying.* Dealing with software versions was a pain, i.e. getting some things to run, finding 64-bit versions, etc.

I didn't really notice any speed difference.

You have to be really careful how you measure RAM usage. Caching and such, while it may show up as RAM usage, is really just there to speed up access. If the system has need of that RAM for something "real", part of the cache will go *poof* and you'll have that extra memory available for what you need to do. Even then, the OS can page if it needs to and it's still better to have 8GB physical memory.

But even if the memory usage of the OS doubles, it's not a wash. If you have 4GB and the OS is using 1GB of it, then that's 3GB free. If the OS usage doubles and you have 8GB memory, that's 2GB in use and 6GB free. That's not exactly a "wash".

- If you use Office products and have 32-bit Access Databases, you CAN'T use 64-bit Office to access those databases, and you can't mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Office products.

Driver, drivers, drivers. And not just drivers, but actual WORKING drivers.

As a consultant I have run into all sorts of issues with 64-bit drivers being non-functional.

Use on networks. Hope to hell you aren't on a Windows 2003 network, or that the admins have patched their server.

Go 32-bit. Wait for Windows 8 or 9 to consider going 64-bit. It isn't worth the hassle right now. I know I've made a lot of money ripping 64-bit Windows off of machines and installing the 32-bit version instead.

My most recent home build was a 64-bit system. It's been the best Windows PC I have ever owned and really performs at or beyond expectation all the time. Haven't been able to say that about a PC in a long time.

There have only been a couple of issues with Audacity and audio drivers -which was solved easily with a beta release- and coming to the realization that my employer's VPN software does not work with Windows 7 64-bit, nor does it work with a virtualized Windows 7-32 or XP VM running on the 64-bit.

There's no way anyone in the company has figured out to get the VPN to work with Windows 7-64. Our IT department won't support it.

So I ended up building a second PC out of spare parts basically just to run Windows 7-32 so I can actually use the VPN and work from home. That PC happens to be a good example of the memory limitation in action because it has 4gb of ram and a 1gb video card. This gives me 3gb of usable system memory.

Why a 1gb card in a VPN box? It was what I had. And it's also a media player PC for the TV. Means I can VPN in to work and sit on my couch with work none the wiser.

- If you use Office products and have 32-bit Access Databases, you CAN'T use 64-bit Office to access those databases, and you can't mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Office products.

Driver, drivers, drivers. And not just drivers, but actual WORKING drivers.

As a consultant I have run into all sorts of issues with 64-bit drivers being non-functional.

Use on networks. Hope to hell you aren't on a Windows 2003 network, or that the admins have patched their server.

Go 32-bit. Wait for Windows 8 or 9 to consider going 64-bit. It isn't worth the hassle right now. I know I've made a lot of money ripping 64-bit Windows off of machines and installing the 32-bit version instead.

- Use 32-bit IE, that's the preferred way anyway (as by the download, the default one you run is 32b)- Use 32-bit Office, then. No worries. It works fine on Win7 64b- Drivers issues, as already mentioned, are more yo-fault. You either have ancient hardware or you have really crappy hardware or both.- Networks aren't an issue. We have everything here from Win7 64b to all the way back to XP (necessary for testing) with every single version of Windows in between and it all works. Of course, we actually keep our hardware/VMs patched so that may be, as you say, why it does. If your admin aren't applying patches, then you have more problems than worrying about upgrading OSs.

There is no hassle unless you have ancient and/or crappy hardware. And then, yes, stick to 32b. otherwise, if you have any machine made in the past 5 years (modulo 32-bit Atom), you should be good. Even a Pentium4 (one that has 64b) can run it (and that's over 5 years old hardware).

Curious you didn't see fit to mention one of the distinctions between 64 and 32 bit windows that has nothing to do with ram at all:

Drivers must be signed on 64 to be installed, but don't have to be on 32.

Look at this:"For device drivers passing the WHQL tests, Microsoft creates a digitally signed certification file that, when included in the driver installation package allows installation on 64 bit versions of Windows and prevents 32 bit versions of Vista and all versions of Windows XP from displaying a warning message that the driver has not been certified by Microsoft (see Windows XP screenshot on the right)."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHQL_Testing

DrPizza wrote:

Dawn Falcon wrote:

DrPizza wrote:

If we were talking the early days of Windows Vista, then yes, drivers would be a legitimate concern. But since both Windows Vista and Windows 7 WHQL requirements mandate both bitnesses of driver, driver issues are far behind us.

Ah yes, that "theory" thing again. Shame about practice.

In practice, I've been running 64-bit Windows full-time on a range of different devices since 2006, and only one device (a USB WiFi dongle) didn't have a 64-bit driver for the duration. Even if acquired one at some point during Windows Vista's life.

If your hardware has no 64-bit driver, it must be either very old, in which case replace it, or very badly made, in which case replace it.

No this really can be an issue. I've had to get rid of a scanner, printer and webcam on account of 64 bit windows.

How much imaging equipment do you use anyway? You also do realize that not all of us are tech journalists; some are college students who need to make ends meet and use legacy hardware as a solution. Examples of excellent legacy hardware are printers, scanners and fax machines, camera's, and pen enabled drawing surfaces. Some of this equipment is 10 years old, yes, but some has been sold as recently as 6 years ago, and occasionally your hardware will have specific features that overrule your gravitation towards brand names. I dare you, for instance, to find me a gooseneck webcam that claims to support win7 64 bits.

Graph calculators fall under this category too, as does specialized serial port equipment. Joysticks and soundscards too, obviously, and if you're into legacy gaming, that's going to be a problem with 64 bit. And then there's 32 bit cpu's, which you find in many ultraportables from even 3 years ago.

I still made the change, but this was in spite of having to give up stuff. The recommendation should be the same, unless there's something you rely on that's not supported...like your cpu.

Overall, the lack of mention of these things makes the article a shoddy piece of work...and once again, I bet it's because the ars staff is in a blind spot, unable to correctly percieve the importance of tech that isn't new.

Verdict: Go with Windows 64-bit if you can, even if the RAM available doesn't justify it.

TLDR ahead----

<quote>It's perhaps a little ironic that this advantage has nothing to do with being 64-bit as such—the 32-bit server versions of Windows can already access all this memory—it's just that 64-bit Windows forces developers to fix the bugs that plagued 32-bit Windows</quote>

32-bit alone can by no means access more than 4 GiB of memory, period.

It also has nothing to do with a "bug" that 64-bit Windows forces developers to fix. There is no such thing, and building an application in 32-bit and consequently preventing its access to more than 4 GiB of memory is not a bug, it's a compilation detail.

32-bit server versions of Windows still cannot support applications capable of accessing more than 4 GiB of memory, i.e. 64-bit apps, so the need for 64-bit is still there.

It would have been also important to point out that the memory limitations of lesser versions of Windows are just that, limitations. There is no difference between Ultimate 64-bit and Home Premium 64-bit. The only reason one supports more memory is because Microsoft put in code to restrict the other versions so that ram-lovers would buy a more expensive one.

Just as a side-note, today, I can buy a gaming rig with 24 GiB of DDR3-1333 RAM with a Core i7 and a Premium Graphic Card for about 2000$, which would require buying Windows 64-bit Professional/Business/Ultimate just because Microsoft says so.

Yet, while the best edition of Desktop Windows supports up to 192 GiB, both Mac OS X Snow Leopard and 64-bit Linux distros report being able to handle up to 16 TiB of RAM, or in other words, as much as you can throw at them with today's current hardware.

Impossible? They were using 512 GiB of RAMs in a single SGI machine some years ago to do earthquake simulations. Windows could not have been used.

It would have been nice if you could have represented this reality, just as a comparison, within this article.

What reality are you talking about? Yes, Microsoft makes limitations in their OS for market segmentation. Is that your "point"? The VAST majority of users can get by with Windows Home today. It's not a problem and most certainly not a "big" problem. Most users can get by with 2GB memory these days. Maybe in a few years that will get bumped up to 4GB.

Verdict: Go with Windows 64-bit if you can, even if the RAM available doesn't justify it.

TLDR ahead----

<quote>It's perhaps a little ironic that this advantage has nothing to do with being 64-bit as such—the 32-bit server versions of Windows can already access all this memory—it's just that 64-bit Windows forces developers to fix the bugs that plagued 32-bit Windows</quote>

Since Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows has used PAE mode as long as hardware DEP is enabled. Hardware DEP requires a field in the page table entries that only exists in PAE mode.

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32-bit alone can by no means access more than 4 GiB of memory, period.

Whatever are you talking about? 32-bit Windows Server can access up to 64 GiB of physical memory, in the Datacenter server edition.

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It also has nothing to do with a "bug" that 64-bit Windows forces developers to fix. There is no such thing, and building an application in 32-bit and consequently preventing its access to more than 4 GiB of memory is not a bug, it's a compilation detail.

It does indeed. The PHYSICAL_ADDRESS structure, used for DMA and certain other tasks, has been 64-bit for, I believe, the whole of Windows NT's life. Certainly it's been 64-bit since Windows NT 4. It has to be 64-bit so that it can accommodate high physical addresses. NVIDIA, among others, truncated PHYSICAL_ADDRESS structures to 32-bit, preventing the use of memory with addresses higher than 0xffff'ffff.

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32-bit server versions of Windows still cannot support applications capable of accessing more than 4 GiB of memory, i.e. 64-bit apps, so the need for 64-bit is still there.

Naturally.

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It would have been also important to point out that the memory limitations of lesser versions of Windows are just that, limitations. There is no difference between Ultimate 64-bit and Home Premium 64-bit. The only reason one supports more memory is because Microsoft put in code to restrict the other versions so that ram-lovers would buy a more expensive one.

That's true to an extent, but the capping of Windows XP Service Pack 2 and up to physical addresses below 0xffff'ffff was due to compatibility.

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It would have been nice if you could have represented this reality, just as a comparison, within this article.

What reality? You know why Microsoft caps supported memory to 192 GiB? Because that's all they can test. There isn't a Mac on the planet that supports 16 TiB RAM, so Apple has literally no way of validating such a configuration. Microsoft, on the other hand, knows that Windows--and the hardware Windows runs on--properly supports 192 GiB because the company has actually put the machines together to test it.

- If you use Office products and have 32-bit Access Databases, you CAN'T use 64-bit Office to access those databases, and you can't mix and match 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Office products.

That's an Office peculiarity. Most other software allows side-by-side installation just fine. Office's failure to support this is most peculiar.

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Driver, drivers, drivers. And not just drivers, but actual WORKING drivers.

Not my experience at all.

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Use on networks. Hope to hell you aren't on a Windows 2003 network, or that the admins have patched their server.

Huh?

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Go 32-bit. Wait for Windows 8 or 9 to consider going 64-bit. It isn't worth the hassle right now. I know I've made a lot of money ripping 64-bit Windows off of machines and installing the 32-bit version instead.

Sure. I didn't say otherwise. I said that 32-bit was vulnerable to ASLR attacks such as heap spraying and JIT spraying. 64-bit isn't; the address space is simply too big.

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and 32Bit Windows with PAE can address more than 4GB RAM.

Not in the desktop versions it can't; not since Windows XP Service Pack 2. Even in PAE mode, that operating system restricts physical addresses to 0x0-0xffff'ffff.

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IE9 (64Bit) is slower compared to the 32Bit version,

Yes, it is. That's one of the reasons you can't even make 64-bit Internet Explorer 9 the default browser. It refuses to allow it.

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Office 2010 (64Bit) is official not recommend by MS.

I think that's a little strong. They say that you should use 32-bit unless you have good reason not to; I actually don't agree with their stance. Unless you have a 32-bit-only plugin that you cannot live without, 64-bit is more secure (and, for Excel at least, better-performing).

They just open more and more software until the monthly patch comes out at which point they reboot when prompted. In an office situation it is not uncommon to see firefox, IE, every office app open, maybe acrobat reader, plus a few specialized applications, and 4 inches worth of widgets.

The only reasons you might consider running 32 bit version is if your hardware is not the supported list, or does not let you install more than 3 GB of ram.

With a 32 bit OS, each application get a piece of the pie. Windows 7 looking at the desktop takes about a gig. The maximum ram the OS can usually see is either 3.5 or 3.25 gigs. You get a bit over 2 gigs for your applications. Web browsers after a couple of hours use take a gig each. What, you want to run other software too? Hold on a few minutes while I swap this all onto the hard drive.

With the 64 bit version of the OS, say running 6 gigs of ram. The OS is using 1.25 gigs looking at the desktop (I have a 1 gig video card), which leaves the user with 4.75 gigs of ram to run software.

You can easily see how the 64 bit version of the OS combined with sufficient ram in the computers can dramatically lower support costs due.

With a 32 bit OS, each application get a piece of the pie. Windows 7 looking at the desktop takes about a gig. The maximum ram the OS can usually see is either 3.5 or 3.25 gigs. You get a bit over 2 gigs for your applications. Web browsers after a couple of hours use take a gig each. What, you want to run other software too? Hold on a few minutes while I swap this all onto the hard drive.

That's not how it actually works, or I'm misinterpreting your scenario.

I tried both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista (recent service pack) and I went back to 32 until I have a need for large amounts of RAM per application.

I run Office and development tools, plus photo apps with moderate RAM usage. I had 8 GB of physical RAM, and of course the 32-bit OS only used half of that.

* The 64-bit system had twice the useable RAM but also almost twice the usage. Roughly break-even.* The dual system folder layout for 64-bit is annoying.* Dealing with software versions was a pain, i.e. getting some things to run, finding 64-bit versions, etc.

If you bought the PC and it came with XP, or you built it before Vista came out, I would strongly consider not upgrading it, leave it be and buy a new PC and go Win7 64-bit on that.If you used the downgrade to XP privilege, go ahead and upgrade as soon as you can.

I don't agree with this at all. We upgraded our dad's old Dell P4 system with Windows 7 and an Intel SSD drive and it feels like a brand new computer for much cheaper than a new computer that comes with a hard drive rather than SSD. He can coldboot to the Windows 7 desktop in about 20 seconds. Apps just pop on the screen. No hard drive churning ever. Now the major rate-limiting step is the onboard Intel graphics.

I was on Newegg last night about to pull the trigger on a copy of Win7 Home Premium + a new SSD.

I still have Vista-64 on a 300gb platter drive, and you know what? It still works. Any reason to drop ~$300 on the combo I described above?

I wouldn't waste money on the SSD, but Windows 7 manages memory much better than Vista; everything just runs so much smoother. It's the difference between a genuine New York pizza and Domino's.

Besides a new graphics card, the SSD is the single best upgrade anyone can do for their old system. It is an improvement on the level of many orders of magnitude rather than single percentages. Better than RAM upgrades, better than a higher RPM hard drive, etc.

I went directly to 64bit and for all my devices that don't have compatible drivers (my visioneer one touch scanner for example) I keep my VMware converted copy of my old XP install to utilize. (Hightly suggest vmware converter whenever doing an upgrade)

It's pretty awesome to see windows 7 give me an "Unknown device" when I hook up the scanner, but VMware lets me connect it to the winXP host anyway and that OS sees it just fine!Very cool.... did I say very cool?peace.

XP64 was a dog, drivers sucked, graphics were slower, printers/scanners would balk, time was lost in forumland working out workarounds that wouldn't work (this wasn't exactly Microsoft's fault, to be honest). Used it, but never installed it on one of my own. It was too rare to have enough support from OEMs, too early for widespread adoption.

Vista64 was actually quite good if you had up-to-date hardware, and wasn't plagued by the usual Vista (32) troubles that (rightfully) gave the Vista such a bad name. Don't crucify me please - I've used pretty much anything, and even Vista 32 was a gem of speed and stability compared to first few OSX releases. Even if it was years later in coming though, hehe. Had to install it with some trepidation (needed way more than 3GB, I do CGI stuff), but after I did I certainly was not sorry (apart from lack of Palm USB drivers. In the end I'm not sorry Palm folded - a tech company unable to code in a USB driver?). but I digress.

Windows 7? Vista Reloaded or Vista Atonement, is my take. I've gotten used to Aero, and it's very useable. Not as polished at corners as OSX, but very liveable. And OSX, despite its (for me) very attractive POSIX underpinnings, suffers from many workarounds (around the safeguards built for typical noob users). Compared to current OSX it's easier to mangle a 7 (though way more resilient than an XP), but easier to fiddle with too. IMHO. But Windowsland has always been good for legacy applications, which is another upside for me.

Anyway. Ages ago, we were using 64bits on Irix, with support for 32bit. Around the time when NT 4.0 and the neolithic non-preemptive-multitasking thing that was System 8? 9? was around. Of course it did not have any drivers, apart from what you had to code for yourself.

16 and 32 bits are history, simply because we have to have semitransparent stuff with good alphablending, and tons of background stuff engaged in internet chatter about our activities behind our backs, and way too realistic fluid sims and explosion effects. Progress is good. Minecraft is beguiling.

Who, besides corporate customers, is adopting Windows 7 now when Windows 8 is on the horizon? If you waited a year and a half surely you have patience for another 8 months to get windows 8 and not have a $300 hole in your pocket.

Eh, I got Windows 7 Professional last year for $140 (I buy OEM versions because I don't need poorly enunciated tech support). I can't even look at a machine with XP on it anymore, the difference is that great.

I will try Windows 8 when it arrives, and if the difference is again a major one, I will purchase it. For less than $150, just like you can.

Why do you even have to make this decision? What's Microsoft's excuse for not making a fully hybrid 32/64-bit OS like OS X 10.6?

I'm not really sure what you mean.

To clarify the good doctors response.

Win XP is an 8bit/16bit/32bit hybrid meaning it can run software written for i8080 and x86processors, but not 64 bit code.

Vista & Win7 are 32bit/64bit hybrids meaning that support was added for 64bit code and memory addressing, but support for 8bit & 16bit code was removed. (You can still run 8bit & 16bit code on 64bit x86 CPUs, but the direct OS support was removed from Windows beginning with Vista)

In this sense Vista & Win7 are just as much 32bit/64bit hybrids as Mac OSX is. In fact if OSX did not gain this feature until 10.6, then Microsoft beat them to it with the release of Vista

I am a mac guy, I like being able to compile my own software, and write perl scripts and use bash commands. I like virtual memory which works, and a disk cache which actually caches. When I copy text I expect to be able to paste it later. When the desktop loads after a reboot, I expect to be able to click on stuff, and have the computer respond.

Windows 7 is the first version of windows which doesn't drive nuts with how poorly the lower levels of virtual memory, disk access, and task prioritization perform. Copy and paste works at long last, and it seems to be universal. control shift escape now allows you to kill a process tree so that processes don't keep re-spawning each other (though you still need process explorer to tell you what process is at the top of the tree).

So should you upgrade to windows 7, definitely, it is very worth while.

There are still a few annoying things. My trackpad driver (asus laptop) on windows 7 page swaps 500 page files a second, the same 500 page files because they under allocated the memory allocation, and the OS isn't smart enough to stop swapping it to disk when I have 4 GB unallocated.

Next on the SSD front, I think that a SSD made my computer run between 5 and 20 times faster across the board. A SSD makes a delightful upgrade, and you should definitely get one. If you can, get both, if you can't and your vista machine has lots of time blood and tears invested into it, get the ssd. Even though the virtual memory, caching, and memory allocation is running around with it's shoes tied together, the ssd is so fast that it can allow the OS to trip over it's own feet every other step and still make progress.

fitten - As long as they have a spare USB drive to plug in for ReadyBoost, sure. It's a cheap and quite painless (well, as long as they don't have something like a 2-USB port Dell...) performance boost.

Some software runs *substantially* faster on 64-bit Windows. 64-bit software can make use of 64-bit math -- 64x64 bit multiplies giving 128-bit results. If that's what you need then 64-bit software can easily run four times faster. Fractal eXtreme's deep zooming capabilities are one example -- it runs 4-5x faster if you use the 64-bit version (when exploring well beyond double-precision range).

* The 64-bit system had twice the useable RAM but also almost twice the usage. Roughly break-even.

That's a huge exaggeration. The only thing that has to be twice as large in 64 bit is pointers. Everything else depends on the compiler. The majority of 64 bit versions of programs won't get anywhere near double the memory usage. As a rough rule of thumb you can expect a 20-30% increase.

Even if you were right about memory usage, it wouldn't be "break-even" because 64 bit allows you to use *more* than double the amount of physical memory.

Why do you even have to make this decision? What's Microsoft's excuse for not making a fully hybrid 32/64-bit OS like OS X 10.6?

I'm not really sure what you mean.

In this sense Vista & Win7 are just as much 32bit/64bit hybrids as Mac OSX is. In fact if OSX did not gain this feature until 10.6, then Microsoft beat them to it with the release of Vista

The difference on Mac OS X was that the word size used by the kernel was orthogonal to the user space word size. So a 32-bit kernel (which ran in "compatibility mode") supported both 32-bit and 64-bit user applications in 10.4 (Tiger +), ensuring that you could use your old drivers but still run your shiny new 64-bit programs. i.e. there never was a OSX32/OSX64 distinction. Also, 32-bit apps always had a full 4 GiB user process virtual address space, which was a bit lower performance for some workloads but offered more freedom to application developers than 32-bit windows.

If we were talking the early days of Windows Vista, then yes, drivers would be a legitimate concern. But since both Windows Vista and Windows 7 WHQL requirements mandate both bitnesses of driver, driver issues are far behind us.

So obviously this issue is a concern for some (legit or not) and has traditionally been a sore point for 64bit in general. You may feel it is all solved, but are you writing the article for yourself?

And is the standard for info anecdotal experience?

Under XP and previous systems, the 64 and 32 bit editions were functionally different operating systems, based on differing kernels. 64bit XP actually used the server kernel, and thus needed special drivers written, not just compiled. in Win 7, the driver model is universal under a single kernel, it's only a matter of a few compiler switches between them. Also, 32bit drivers work fine in 64bit Win 7.

Legacy devices with no vista/7 support at all, that's a different story, but if you expected 7 year old drivers written for XP to work in 7 at all, let alone 64bit, you had a surprise most likely waiting for you.

Thanks, exactly my point. An Ars article discussing upgrading to 7 64bit should have included a discussion of drivers to at minimum dispel severity of the issue.

But Peter doesn't have a driver problem, so it doesn't need to be mentioned. I guess.

True, the SP2 stopped the +4GB support... and DEP activating PAE does not enable the +4GB support ![quote

Quote:

"That 32-bit editions of Windows Vista are limited to 4GB is not because of any technical constraint on 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code."http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm ... memory.htm

Thank You Microsoft !!!

The issue is not the 4 GiB limit. It is the physical address limit. Microsoft doesn't allow 32-bit desktop operating systems to use physical addresses higher than 0xffff'ffff due to driver breakage.[/quote]This is complete marketing bullshit....I'm ashamed you think this is true...

This is a stupid answer..., you know very well if Apple was selling Mac Pro with 1024 core, the Mac OS X version would be the same as the desktop one...The Multi Core support should not be an option, there is absolutely no technical limitations to support 1 or 1024 cores !Why should apple loose plenty of time setting "Marketing Limitations" inside their kernel to limitate this kind of technical issues ?

Quote:

Quote:

Microsoft explicitely wants you to make a decision, purely market choice, a mixed 32/64 is possible since the first X86_64 processors...

Unlike Linux, Windows manages to support a mixed 32-/64-bit userland without any trouble at all.

Just look before talking, 32/64 userland never was an issue under linux ;-)FYI, Ubuntu ships the same kernel for 32 or 64bit distribution version...FYI the first 64bit compatible distributions (Mandriva or Fedora) mixed completely the 32 and 64bit libraries and applications !FYI you install the majority of 32bit libraries in a debian based 64bit distribution...

You must understand the points exposed in your aswers are only "Market Decisions" instead of technical limitations and decisions... this is not what the world needs for the future of computing !

Just stop accept microsoft's pseudo technical bullshit... Windows 7 is great, but it would be far better without their "marketing limitations", they make absolutely no sense at all !

XP64 was a dog, drivers sucked, graphics were slower, printers/scanners would balk, time was lost in forumland working out workarounds that wouldn't work (this wasn't exactly Microsoft's fault, to be honest). Used it, but never installed it on one of my own. It was too rare to have enough support from OEMs, too early for widespread adoption.

Thats because it wasnt xp in64bit mode, it was windows server with the server stuff mostly hacked out.

nick de plume wrote:

Vista64 was actually quite good if you had up-to-date hardware, and wasn't plagued by the usual Vista (32) troubles that (rightfully) gave the Vista such a bad name. Don't crucify me please - I've used pretty much anything, and even Vista 32 was a gem of speed and stability compared to first few OSX releases. Even if it was years later in coming though, hehe. Had to install it with some trepidation (needed way more than 3GB, I do CGI stuff), but after I did I certainly was not sorry (apart from lack of Palm USB drivers. In the end I'm not sorry Palm folded - a tech company unable to code in a USB driver?). but I digress.

The "bad name" vista got was mostly from mac fanbois and people irritated that it took so long to come out, realistically apart from 3rd party OEMs taking forever with drivers the only real issues were that odd audio networking bug and certain explorer settings not sticking (finder alone was/is far shittier)

nick de plume wrote:

Windows 7? Vista Reloaded or Vista Atonement, is my take. I've gotten used to Aero, and it's very useable. Not as polished at corners as OSX, but very liveable. And OSX, despite its (for me) very attractive POSIX underpinnings, suffers from many workarounds (around the safeguards built for typical noob users). Compared to current OSX it's easier to mangle a 7 (though way more resilient than an XP), but easier to fiddle with too. IMHO. But Windowsland has always been good for legacy applications, which is another upside for me.

?osx is trivial to mangle, win7 not so. NT has been posix compatable for most of it's existance and theres interix/SUA to make it even more unixlike.

"That 32-bit editions of Windows Vista are limited to 4GB is not because of any technical constraint on 32-bit operating systems. The 32-bit editions of Windows Vista all contain code for using physical memory above 4GB. Microsoft just doesn’t license you to use that code."http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm ... memory.htm

Thank You Microsoft !!!

The issue is not the 4 GiB limit. It is the physical address limit. Microsoft doesn't allow 32-bit desktop operating systems to use physical addresses higher than 0xffff'ffff due to driver breakage.

This is complete marketing bullshit....I'm ashamed you think this is true...

It's not marketing bullshit since it is true, if anything it's legacy support bullshit.

This is a stupid answer..., you know very well if Apple was selling Mac Pro with 1024 core, the Mac OS X version would be the same as the desktop one...

mac pro's ARE 'desktops' they dont have xserves anymore so the osx server is nowdays that shitty little macmini format 'server'

superna wrote:

The Multi Core support should not be an option, there is absolutely no technical limitations to support 1 or 1024 cores !

There are plenty of technical limitations Russinovich has a clearer explanation however (basically it's a system resources/performance thing).That said, i have the sneaky suspicion that osx is in fact limited to 16 cores (anyone got a mutlisocket hackintosh to test this?)

superna wrote:

Why should apple loose plenty of time setting "Marketing Limitations" inside their kernel to limitate this kind of technical issues ?

It's not an issue simply because you can only actually buy the hardware from apple.

superna wrote:

Quote:

Quote:

Microsoft explicitely wants you to make a decision, purely market choice, a mixed 32/64 is possible since the first X86_64 processors...

Unlike Linux, Windows manages to support a mixed 32-/64-bit userland without any trouble at all.

Just look before talking, 32/64 userland never was an issue under linux ;-)FYI, Ubuntu ships the same kernel for 32 or 64bit distribution version...

Approx the same kernel settings, different binaries (chosen at boot) (windows can actually do the same thing)

superna wrote:

FYI the first 64bit compatible distributions (Mandriva or Fedora) mixed completely the 32 and 64bit libraries and applications !FYI you install the majority of 32bit libraries in a debian based 64bit distribution...

vistax64/win7x64 ships with both 32bit and 64bit user libs/binaries as well, thats exactly why you can use both 32bit and 64bit software on win64 os's, it's possible (and normal by default) to do exactly the same thing with most *nix distro's (tho there are 64bit only distro's), so i have no idea what your point is...

superna wrote:

You must understand the points exposed in your aswers are only "Market Decisions" instead of technical limitations and decisions... this is not what the world needs for the future of computing !

Just stop accept microsoft's pseudo technical bullshit... Windows 7 is great, but it would be far better without their "marketing limitations", they make absolutely no sense at all !

You aren't making any sense yourself (please enable your spell-checker at least...).

there are a lot of (legal) ways to get Windows 7, and most of them are a lot cheaper than $300.

Got any suggestions for the cheapest legal way to get Windows 7? I design web sites on a Mac and want to set up a Windows 7 virtual machine. Cheapest I could find from Microsoft is Home Premium for $200. That's a lot of money just to test IE9 on the occasional web page!